Sony pays $50,000 bounty for AI-discovered PS5 exploit

A hacker known as “Jordy” has sparked controversy within the PlayStation 5 homebrew community after receiving a $50,000 bounty from Sony for privately reporting a security vulnerability. The exploit, identified as a ‘Hypervisor Bug’ affecting firmware versions 13.60 through 14.00, was discovered using artificial intelligence.

While Sony utilizes platforms like HackerOne to pay researchers for disclosing vulnerabilities privately before patches are released, the community has reacted negatively. The discovery has halted ongoing development efforts by prominent security engineers, such as Andy Nguyen (theflow0), who had been working on running Linux on the PS5 console. Nguyen announced he is stepping away from the PS5 scene following the report.